ODDS’N’SODS — Rocky landing on Marjorie Lake

During the summer of 1981, I was a geology student working in the Northwest Territories for a large Colorado-based exploration company. Uranium was the target, and we travelled large expanses of the northern forest and barren lands in search of it.

By mid-summer we had moved our base camp twice, from Yellowknife to the East Arm of Great Slave Lake, and then on to the central barrens. It was during our third and final camp move that I experienced my first floatplane “incident.”

We had spent about a month prospecting at Thelon Basin near Dubawnt Lake. At the end of July, we struck our base camp for the move to Marjorie Lake, about 70 km west of the village of Baker Lake. We anticipated that two Twin Otter loads would be required, and two of us piled into the back seats of the floatplane for the first trip.

At that point, Frank, my senior, warned me to never get into a plane in the Arctic without my sleeping bag. I picked it up and tossed it aboard. This turned out to be a somewhat prophetic statement, as several days would pass before we met our colleagues again.

The 250-km flight was uneventful enough. The pilot and co-pilot in the cockpit were dim figures, barely visible beyond the great mound of aluminum field boxes, canvas tent bags and other gear that filled the fuselage. It was quite windy, but I expected little excitement as we began our descent toward Marjorie Lake. After all, I’d already been there on a recent trip. Things changed fast once we hit the water. The smooth glide of pontoon on water ended unexpectedly soon, as we came to an abrupt stop in the centre of the lake — and stayed there. We had run aground on a shoal. The plane moved from side to side in the water as the pilot tried to wrest it free of the rocks. Suddenly we popped free, and the pilot made a beeline for the shore. We were moving fast, and I thought that we might be trying to take off again. In fact, the right float had been completely shattered over about a 12-ft. length, and was rapidly filling with water.

Bit by bit, the right side of the fuselage tilted lower and lower as we sped toward the beach. I don’t recall the usual dockside niceties being observed on this occasion; the pilot plowed the plane into the sand on the edge of the beach — one float up, the other below water line.

So began several rather unproductive days. We were on a windswept beach a long way from anywhere although, luckily, it was the one we’d been heading to anyway. I was thankful for my bomber jacket and sleeping bag, but the fun was just beginning. The plane had to be unloaded: we carried heavy propane kitchen appliances to the beach through frigid chest-high water. Taking stock of provisions, we found a 30-lb. block of cheese, two grocery bags of chocolate bars, at least 50 litres of milk and juice, and two propane refrigerators full of bread and cold cuts.

Our helicopter arrived a few hours later, but expecting a routine trip, the crew had not brought the sling; we were unable to move our heavy gear the almost 1-km distance to the campsite.

The camp had been used the previous summer by another exploration outfit, and they had left behind a small wooden shed used to store gear during the winter. For the next few nights, the shed became our home and the shelving became our bunks. The pilots, perhaps embarrassed by the incident, slept in the plane. I had never met them before our flight, and they weren’t particularly talkative afterwards.

A second plane arrived a few days later with the rest of our crew, but it was another three or four days before our plane was sufficiently repaired to return to Yellowknife.

Reparations accomplished, we were finally able to attend to our business of mapping and prospecting the surrounding area. Later on, during calm days, the troublesome shoal was clearly visible just beneath the surface from high vantage points. On that particular day whitecaps had obscured the rocks. Shortly afterwards, I picked a small chunk of twisted metal from the damaged float off the beach. I still have it, a memento of that rocky landing on Marjorie Lake.

— Stephen Cook is a geochemist with the British Columbia Geological Survey in Victoria, B.C.